Biotechnology and global miscommunication with the public: rhetorical assumptions, stylistic acts, ethical implications

This paper analyzes the assumptions embedded in the language used in some reports issued by the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Board. The question the author raise and attempt to begin to answer is: What assumptions underlie current attempts by international government agencies concerned with biotechnology to communicate with and involve the public in scientific policy and decision-making, and what do these assumptions, encoded and revealed within stylistic elements of press releases and reports, actually communicate to the public? The author shows how the "language of public communication" reflects values and assumptions that negatively affect the public, and why the author believes the risk model of communication, so central in global, as well as national biotechnology communication with the public, is rhetorically, as well as ethically, flawed.